Passwords are designed to authenticate access to services and systems in a secure way. The idea is that a password is kept secret to stop others from accessing personal and sensitive data. However, with many individuals using weak passwords or those who aren’t too good at safekeeping them, accounts are more vulnerable to hackers.
These password statistics are designed to help you understand how crucial choosing a strong password is. For businesses and organizations, it highlights the importance of having IT security software, and the impact password breaches can have.
Don’t forget to check out our recommendations for the best password managers to ensure your passwords and login credentials are kept secure and aren’t forgotten.
Here are the latest password statistics for 2023.
Top Password Statistics 2023
- 90% of internet users worry that their passwords will get hacked
- 53% of people rely on their memory to manage passwords
- 51% of people use the same passwords for work and personal accounts
- 57% of people who have been subjected to phishing attacks still use the same passwords
- 23 million account holders still use the password “123456”
- “Eva” and “Alex” are the most common names used in passwords
- Abu Dhabi is the most commonly used city name in passwords
- The average password has eight characters or less
- The world’s first digital password was created at MIT in 1961
- 37% of internet users request a password change once a month due to forgetfulness
Password Security Statistics 2023
- 71% of accounts are protected by passwords used on multiple websites
- One password is used on average to access five accounts
- 59% of Americas include a name or date of birth in their passwords
- 73% of respondents consider forgetting passwords as the most frustrating aspect of account security
- Three out of four people change only one letter to a character when needing to create a unique password
- 45% of US adults change their password following a data breach
- It takes just 10 minutes to crack a lowercase password that contains six characters
- 67% of IT security practitioners don’t use any form of two-factor authentication in their personal lives
- 76% of Gen-Z users follow the two-step authentication measure
- SMS codes and mobile authentication apps are the preferred types of 2FA
Personal Password Statistics 2023
- 10% of people in California have access to a password that belongs to a former roommate or ex-lover
- 43% of US adults shared their passwords with a partner or family member
- 29% of internet users have more password-protected accounts than they can keep track of
- 31.3% of internet users only change their passwords once or twice a year
- 47% of people change a password by selecting a stronger password
- Food and beverages appear in 1.9% of user-generated passwords
Cybersecurity Statistics 2023
- People can have as many as 85 passwords for all their accounts
- 336 million users were affected by a Twitter bug that saved passwords in plain text
- Having eight characters in a string makes for a strong password though longer logins are much better
- A 12-character password is 62 trillion times more difficult to crack compared to a 6-character password
- One-third of malware breaches are caused by password dumper malware
- Multi-factor authentication blocks 99.9% of all attacks
Password Breach Statistics 2023
- Hackers have published as many as 555 million stolen passwords on the dark web since 2017
- 27% of hackers try to guess other people’s passwords
- 17% of these have got the correct password
- 80% of hacking incidents are caused by stolen or reused information
- 81% of company data breaches are caused by poor passwords
- Hacking attacks using scripts that try to guess usernames and passwords happen every 39 seconds, globally
Password Management Statistics 2023
- There are nearly 10 million variants of the year 2010 being used in passwords
- The second most-used year is 1987
- 7% of 2.2 billion passwords contained curse words
- “Ass” is used in 27 million passwords
- There are 5 million passwords that use the “F” word
- 8.3 million passwords use the year 1991
Password Creation Statistics 2023
- 50% of internet users use the same password for all of their accounts
- People aged 50+ are more likely to use unique passwords for each online service
- 60% of people say they are lazy when creating passwords
- 19% of adults in France use the same one or two passwords for everything
- 21% of adults in Japan have the same habit in password management
- 66% of people make new passwords that are similar to ones they have already used
- 35% of people choose convenience over security when choosing a password
Most Commonly Used Passwords
A shocking 24% of Americans have used one of the following most common passwords in the same or similar form:
- abc123
- Password
- 123456
- iloveyou
- 111111
- Qwerty
- Admin
- Welcome
References
- https://www.avast.com/en-eu/index#mac
- https://www.entrepreneur.com/
- https://blog.google/
- https://www.lawlessresearch.com/
- https://www.ponemon.org/
- https://theharrispoll.com/
- https://digitalguardian.com/
- https://www.fc4.co.uk/
- https://www.lastpass.com/
- https://www.onelogin.com/
- https://www.telesign.com/
- https://www.cnet.com/how-to/9-rules-for-strong-passwords-how-to-create-and-remember-your-login-credentials/
- https://www.securelink.com/blog/consumer-password-habits-concerning-not-surprising/
- https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-mathematics-of-hacking-passwords/
- https://storage.googleapis.com/gweb-uniblog-publish-prod/documents/PasswordCheckup-HarrisPoll-InfographicFINAL.pdf
- https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/azure-active-directory-identity/your-pa-word-doesn-t-matter/ba-p/731984
- https://websitebuilder.org/blog/cyber-security-statistics/
- https://info.varonis.com/hubfs/docs/research_reports/2021-Financial-Data-Risk-Report.pdf?utm_content=146358482